


Beloved Enemy of Peace

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Choices, Declarations Of Love, Established Relationship, Fear, Grounding, Logic, M/M, Overpowering, Panic Attacks, Passion, Post-Coital, Telepathy, Touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 16:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9556763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Passion is the enemy of peace. Passion shatters and overpowers. There are times, though, there are people and other, nameless things, that can make surrender to it worth it.





	

_Passion is the enemy of peace_.

It was a truism. A truth, yes, but not always as profound a one as might be wished. It said everything. It said _nothing_. It was a truth and a constant, but in the face ... in the face of its enemy, in the face of passion itself, there were times it seemed worth less than nothing.

Spock closed his eyes and dropped his burning forehead onto a sweat-soaked shoulder. Leonard, panting raggedly beneath him, made a little huffing noise, amusement, and reached up to curl his hand at the nape of Spock's neck, worn fingers carding gently at his hair. The gesture pulled a noise from Spock's own throat, a low cry of despair, and he pressed himself deeper into the doctor's collarbone, wrapped his arms convulsively tighter around the human's chest. Leonard laughed at him. Leonard worried gently at his hair.

"Shh," he breathed, laughing softly into the skin of Spock's scalp. "Hush, love. We're fine, Spock. Better than fine, even. It's okay. You're all right, love. You're just fine."

Spock didn't answer. His own pulse thundered in his ears, his heart hammering against his side. The aftermath of passion roared through him, a pulsing, clawing, snarling thing, like and yet unlike any fury he had ever felt. Leonard lay laughing and fragile and ruined beneath him, so ragged and so delighted, and it kept some howling thing alive inside him still. His mind foundered against it. Empty words rattled around his skull, shreds of scattered logic, caught and tumbled by the retreating storm, snared by threads of exhaustion. _Passion is the enemy_. Passion is ... passion is the enemy. Passion is ...

_Glorious_. Passion is glorious. Passion is rage and is glory and is good. Something dark inside him whispered it, swelled with it. Something clawed its way upwards through him. Spock keened, curling closer around McCoy. His skin was too hot, too tight. His whole body was too small, wretched and useless and _confining_. He wished to claw his way out of it, to pull it off and climb his way shaking into something else. Some _one_ else. He had no defence against the sensation. He was lost. He didn't know what to do. He was _lost_.

Not pon farr. Not this. Would that it were. Pon farr at least might end. This ...

Leonard noticed, finally. He realised something was wrong. His pulse picked up, the fragile human heart gaining speed beneath Spock's ear. He stiffened in Spock's arms, his hand tightening faintly on Spock's nape. 

"... Spock?" he asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice. "Hey, what's wrong? What is it, love? What's wrong?"

Spock didn't answer. Couldn't yet. He was listening to that other heart still. He was feeling it, the beat of it, up through Leonard's chest and ribs and skin, into his own skull. His forehead was pressed now to Leonard's chest. There was something ... not soothing, no. Not right or calm or peaceful. Not logical, never that. But there was something. The beat of that heart. The pulse of it against his skin. The tight strength of Leonard's fingers against his neck. There was ... something. Spock leaned into it, rocked his head against Leonard's chest. His arms were too tight, he realised vaguely. There was an edge of pain in Leonard's stiffness, filtering across to him through their touch. He was holding too tight. But there was ... there was something. He needed it. There was _something_.

He rolled his head, turned it sideways in the same moment Leonard's other hand came up to try and lever him back. Instead of his hair it caught his cheek, curled around it without meaning to, and in the same instant Spock's temple, his psi-point, touched the skin above Leonard's heart. The sensation ... _jolted_ , shocked straight through him, and something wild and ravaging inside him abruptly fell still. The dark thing, the tearing thing, fell suddenly silent, and in its wake Spock slumped all at once across Leonard's chest. He collapsed, and fell limp.

He drifted for a moment. A while. He wasn't sure how long, and the knowledge of that was distantly terrifying as well. He simply lay, simply existed, and waited while his mind shrank back inside his skin and the hammering of his heart gradually eased. Leonard's hands fretted constantly through his hair, against his skin. He could feel the concern that moved them. He could feel the deep ... the nameless wellspring of emotion beneath it. Not passion, or not just. Something else. Something more terrifying still. 

He wasn't sure, then, how somehow it soothed instead of tore.

"Talk to me, Spock," Leonard whispered, voice soft and ragged with worry. "What happened, love? What the hell happened there? You've gotta talk to me, darling. You gotta tell me what's wrong."

Spock ... coughed. Not a word. Barely even a vocalisation. He growled, snarled at himself with some distant echo of anger, and levered his head off Leonard's chest to look up at him. Levered himself up to look him in the eyes. Leonard's hands slid away from his face. His neck. His skin. Connection slid away. The loss of it was vaguely shattering.

"... Spock?" Leonard prompted, carefully, something a mix between a lover's care and a doctor's more clinical concern in his expression. The lines around his eyes were still tight, remnants of the discomfort of Spock's hold, but there was no sense of fear from him. No knowledge of the beast he had provoked. Just concern, as always. Just worry, and that nameless other thing. Spock was too tired, too worn and too wrung, to tremble with it. He could feel a part of him wanting to regardless.

He opened his mouth. Leonard needed an answer, _deserved_ an answer. There was nothing inside him, though, nothing the remnants of his logic could hope to frame. There were only those words, that empty, useless truism. He said it, because it was all he had. He offered it, because they were the only words he had left.

"... Passion is the enemy of peace," he tried. Rasped, offered. Held out, utterly uselessly. He knew, even as he said them. As empty as they were to him, they were something else _entirely_ to his doctor. He needed no touch against the other's skin to see the instinctive anger rising, the flare of temper and irritation. It was more than he could bear. He knew, he _knew_ how empty the words were, but they were what he felt. They were a truism, but they were also _true_. He was scraped raw inside his skin, and those useless words were the only explanation he had left.

The only _verbal_ explanation he had left.

He reached instinctively. He barely even felt himself do it. He reached out, halting only at the very last, his hand held trembling in the air beside his lover's temple. Leonard blinked at him, something wide and startled in his eyes. Half-fearful. There was a reason Spock did not often make this gesture. There were memories, shadows in Leonard's mind at the prospect of it. Spock would never wake them deliberately, never purposefully echo them. He wouldn't. But he ... needed. Now, in this moment, he needed. And there was only half fear in Leonard's eyes. Behind it, beneath it, that nameless thing rose instead.

"Please," Spock whispered. "Ashayam, please. Let me ...?"

Leonard was silent now in his turn. For a ... a long moment, another time without measure, while they both clawed for steadiness. He was afraid. Spock could see it. His chest heaved. His heart hammered. He drew a ragged breath. 

And then, wordless, he came up onto his elbows, and leaned his temple into the touch of Spock's hand.

The connection didn't jolt. There was a part of Spock that thought it should have, but it didn't. Raw as they both were, there was just a ... a surge, a flow, another mind welling up and washing through him. It didn't hurt. Spock could feel him, could feel _Leonard_ , worried and angry and focusing all of himself on Spock, on reaching him, on helping him. It didn't hurt. The nameless thing reached up and halfway drowned him.

But it wasn't ... that wasn't the point. That wasn't why he'd asked. He wouldn't have let himself, had that been all there was. He had to ...

He reached. Tugged, gently. He reached out and drew Leonard towards himself, inside himself. Into his mind, into his skin. He tried to show ... to show the shattered, fractured space inside him. The dark thing, the howling thing that had shattered it. The sensation of Leonard beneath him, his arms too tight around a human chest, his skin too tight around a vulcan one. The thing that wasn't peace, that could never _be_ peace. The thing that was glorious and terrifying. The torn remnants of logic left behind it. The horror, the itchy exultation. 

And then ... then. The heartbeat. The nameless thing. Not passion. Something worse. Something better. The thing that ... that made the other bearable. That made the other quiet. The thing that reached up, hands around his head and a heartbeat in his ear, and pulled him gently back inside his skin.

"... Oh love," Leonard whispered. "Oh love. Oh love." 

He reached up again. Spock felt him, inside and out. Instinct, that nameless thing. Leonard cupped one hand against his cheek, curled the other at his nape. It ... didn't jolt, not quite. Something lurched inside Spock regardless.

"I'm so sorry, darlin'," his lover whispered. His lover _breathed_. "Spock. I am, I really am. I didn't even see it coming. I'm so sorry."

But he wasn't. He was and he wasn't. There was sorrow there, yes, and concern, and breathless regret, but underneath that there was ... joy. Awe. Something, that other thing. _Love_. Worse than passion. An order of magnitude worse. Passion was chaos, was the enemy of all peace, but _this_ ... This. This made it worth it. That empty, shattered space. This made it worth every break, every ragged, weeping wound. It was terrible. It was the most beautiful, wonderous thing Spock had ever felt. 

He'd known that before, to an extent. He'd always known. Not just for Leonard. For any of them. He'd loved before, he loved still, enough to die, enough to betray everything he was. Enough, as Leonard would perhaps put it, to sell his soul. He'd known that before. 

It was just ... it was different. Here. Now. In this smaller, more primal space. In this skin, laid bare against his lover's skin. It was different with that primitive, roaring thing only barely pulled back inside him. It was different with the bruises on his lover's skin, and the fractures inside his own soul, and the breathless, nameless calm that cupped them both and made them quiet again. It was ... it was different. For it to wake passion, and still be bearable. For it to sunder all logic, and still be worth it. That was ... different. Not the same.

"... How do you do this?" he asked, numb and, suddenly, nearly laughing. Leonard blinked at him, Leonard stared, and Spock felt a chuckle bubble up through the ruins of his chest. "You are ... you are an enemy of all logic, Leonard. An enemy of all peace. How do you do this? How do you have me bear it?"

Because he did, he realised. Bear it. He could. He _would_. He would more than bear it. Despair threatened, joy in its wake, but he had it within his grasp. This thing, this passion and this love, it was ... bearable. Doable. It would tear everything around it, but it would fit inside his skin. With ... work. With time. It would do that.

He wanted it to. The last self-betrayal, the last surrender to the enemy, but he did. He wanted this. He wanted _Leonard_.

"... I swear," Leonard started, something ... odd, strange, another nameless thing, echoing in his voice. He paused, and swallowed, and started again. "I honestly swear, Spock, I have no goddamn idea. I've no idea what the hell I'm doing, to me or to you. I don't know. I really don't. But I think ... I think whatever the hell it is, I want to keep on doing it. Whatever it is, I hope to God I never have to stop." 

And that was ... Spock felt the welling on both sides of the meld, the endless, nameless swell, the rough, ragged laughter that guided it. Leonard's. His own. He felt them both, equal and well-matched in all regards, and let them tumble him gently forward. He felt his hands slip from Leonard's skin, connection tumbling, and felt Leonard's lips find his own instead. Felt it rush anew, wonderous and terrifying and the last enemy of peace, and there, at the last ...

He surrendered to it. Completely. And was not wholly uncontent.


End file.
